On keeping a magickal diary...
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@AllMyWill said
"So, helpful...
"93, AllMyWill.
That meme is GOLD.
I used to get frustrated when I read about keeping a Magickal diary and kept reading things like "don't worry about what things mean now, just build up the discipline and write". However, it is becoming more and more obviously true as I go on it seems. All I can tell you is KEEP IT UP! If you write daily, to the best of you current understanding of how to do it, IT WILL CHANGE YOU and when you look back months from now you will see how you've changed, hopefully in ways that previously weren't even on your radar.You may find the following Crowley quote helpful :
"To advance—that means Work. Patient, exhausting, thankless, often bewildering Work. Dear sister, if you would but Work! Work blindly, foolishly, misguidedly, it doesn’t matter in the end: Work in itself has absolute virtue." -Magick Without Tears
93s!
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Man, you already know the main purpose. You're making your own life an experiment. Over time, you'll develop the habit of mindful awareness of how the moon, other planets, and the weather, etc., etc. affect your success and progress. Later, with just the date and location, you'll be able to confirm astrological variables and all kinds of stuff from long before you had a clue about astrology. And why? Because you have a record. But there's more than that as well. And if I tried to tell you my own experience, then you'd just argue with my claims of experience rather than your own personal experience. And then you might neglect it because you doubt my experience is real, useful, or beneficial. I probably shouldn't have even brought up the astrological stuff, which you're probably dutifully skeptical about so far, but let that be an example.
Commit to doing it for a long, set period of time at least before you let doubt, unconscious fears, and inertia get together and make you quit it before you discover stuff on your own.
Bottom line: Sometimes you just gotta sand the damn floor and discover the benefit later. But I've already tried to tell people what I think they can expect, and they don't show up anymore. Some stuff is just too outrageous to believe at face value from someone else.
Just keep doing what you're doing. You'll tweak it over time, and that's fine. You're assigning your own grade after all.
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@Frater Meme said
"What a long, boring, hypocritical, and potentially counterproductive post I've made...
I wonder how much I'll be made to pay for it."
93!
Hmmm... not sure where your coming from here...
Your last 2 posts seemed very on target to me.93s!
edited for spelling
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I have a 100 pages of story format dream journals on my computer. Worth nothing to me now except for a handful unexplainable experiences. I then went through a period where I wrote things out weekly, then ceremonially threw them away. Usually things I actually write down are things that don't align to my natural inclinations anyways. It wouldn't seem like a chore if it was! Documentation is mental housekeeping. Are you the type that procrastinates your chores or does them dutifully?
Ramble on...
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93,
One of the best parts, when working with a magical journal, is persuasive writing. And then, eventually, one uncovers that the scribe is actually trying to persuade someone (possibly the person who is doing the writing). Then, the scribe starts to discover "why" (?) and "because" (!) eventually - not that they are real things, but just that they are elements of persuasion. Then one starts to discover who the scribe actually is - and who he is not. Then one moves further and sees that all thoughtforms can be attempts at persuasion...and can be used beneficially. And one actually creates what they think is beneficial through this persuasion. What comes first?
And then one aims to learn how to be in love with the thoughtforms and the narrative is not just confined to the journal. It becomes life.
Persuasion is no longer needed? Persuasion is no longer needed!
Everything is as it should be? Everything is as it should be!
93 93/93
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At your stage in the process, the absolute most valuable thing it did for me was to focus my self-discipline toward the work my intellect had decided it wanted to do. At least three times prior, I had "decided" to take up the Great Work and quickly found out that there is a huge gap between what the decider decides, and what the machine is actually willing to do. Once I set myself the simple task of recording the fact that I did Resh at four specific times each day, I was able to start retraining my machine to follow orders. I can't say that those entries give me any special insight now, but they do exist to remind me of those first baby steps I had to take in order to get to the point of sort-of-upright-walking that I manage today.
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I found my journal entries to be invaluable, especially where I note down specifics of my sitting meditation practice - if you don't note down the details in retrospect they may all seem sort of same (after all - you are just sitting there), but in fact as you look at your entries you will see that there are as many variations of sitting sessions as there are days in an aeon. I find these little variations to be important - there is often a pattern to them that you will likely not recognize unless you are keeping a journal.
Sometimes it's a little insight that comes up that seems very enlightening and if I don't note it down I will forget it, which gets frustrating. Insights get built one on the other, so noting them down is important. For instance your 1st insight might be some observation that will further grow and expand in your 5th insight - for example. If you forgot your learnings from the 1st insight, your 5th one will lose the context for interpretation. This might or might not happen, it's just one of the many possibilities of how things work - at least for me.Another tremendous benefit is to see your notes when you first started and you compare them to your progress at present time. You might currently feel like you are not getting anywhere because your mind/concentration is all over the place for instance, but then you look back at your notes from a year ago and you discover that you are actually miles away from where you began, and your concentration is actually much better now as opposed to back then - that is very encouraging to see. It really motivates you to just keep on going forward.
